


The Enemy Of My Enemy Is

by Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: Ellipse [8]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, Curse Breaking, Enemies to reluctant allies, Gen, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 18:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14361594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: They'd made plans. Of course they'd fucking made plans.All that prep, and Bulshar still caught them by surprise.Or rather, caughtBoboby surprise, damn it. Embarrassing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to KD Heart and Sanguine for the stuntreading :-D

They'd made plans. Of course they'd fucking made plans. Whole afternoons at the station and at Shorty's, trying to figure out what might affect Bulshar's power enough to kill him. Waverly with the study she'd made of objects of power, hoping to identify the rings. Picking Bobo's head about which other rings and items he'd seen Bulshar wear or keep near. Wynonna endlessly questioning every detail he knew about Bulshar's behaviour, down to exactly how the showdown had gone the first time. Bobo had spent a century trying not to think about it, but for her he'd tried to recall it with all the painful clarity of knowing what came after.

He'd needed a stiff drink afterward.

All that prep, and Bulshar still caught them by surprise.

Or rather, caught _Bobo_ by surprise, damn it. Embarrassing.

They'd expected to go out toward the demon's lair to have their confrontation. Expected to be able to pick their moment.

Instead Bulshar came into Purgatory, had one of his Revenants ram his truck into Bobo while he was on his bike, and the whole thing went down right there in main street.

 

 _Of course_ , Bobo thought as he regained consciousness with the demon's newly regenerated arm around his throat, being held like a living shield in a familiar position. There was road rash all along his right shoulder and arm and he had a splitting headache. The right side of his face felt wet, a wound in his hairline bleeding sluggishly. _Of course it's going to happen here_. A perfect re-enactment in the exact place as last time.

Bobo remembered a line from a fantasy book he'd read sometime in the early 90s.

_What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn._

He'd taken it as a warning to not get stagnant, to keep looking around and experiencing the world, or the particular corner of it he had access to. To learn from his mistakes instead of repeating them, and to stay open to new things. To learn new technology as it developed. Hell, the internet had massively opened up his world.

Bulshar was thousands of years old. He was following a familiar script.

Wynonna, more so than Wyatt, wasn't much of a follower. Bobo could only hope that would hold true.

"EARP!" he bellowed over Bobo's head. "COME OUTSIDE AND FACE YOUR RECKONING!"

It was taking longer than expected for the others to come out of the station, and Bobo was trying to keep his cool, to not allow the thought that maybe they would just... not come. Maybe they'd just leave Bobo to the demon. But -- no, that was, that was not Wynonna, that was not the Deputy Marshall, that was not Waverly, that was not Deputy Haught. Hell, that wasn't even Hank. He chose to leave aside the question if they would come out for him, and thought instead about shared goals. They all wanted the demon dead and the curse ended. They had never had a better chance to do it than now.

They would come.

The streets went quiet, Purgatory's citizens sensibly staying inside. Bulshar grew restless, and Bobo distracted himself from his own growing panic by reaching out with his sense for metal, trying to find all the separate pieces on the demon's body. Trying to identify their shape. He'd never had need to do this before; knowing something was metal and roughly its mass had always been plenty of info to reach out and manipulate something, move it or shape it.

The only thing that had ever stood out to him while trying to move it was Peacemaker. Wyatt's gun had had a distinct feeling to it, and he remembered thinking he couldn't control it right until it had flown into his hand.

On a vague hunch, he'd asked to see the demon's rings before they were taken to be melted down. Put them spread out on a table, added some of his own rings, and sat there with his eyes closed and just... tried to feel them. Feel if they could be told apart somehow. If he could tell which ones were powerful, carried some sort of magic, and which ones were simply metal. Then he'd tried to feel the level of that power, see if he could order them.

Waverly said that her research had concurred with his pick for the most powerful, but it had taken practice to pick out even the same ring on a reliable basis.

One of those rings he now recognised on the demon's regenerated hand. Damn it, they'd left it much too long - he'd forged a new one, and it was the one that gave him similar sort of power over metal as Bobo had. Fuck, they only had that one bullet. If Bulshar deflected it--

He redirected his attention to the metal around him. Circles. He found four rings beside the remade one. All powerful. Ending this century long nightmare might depend entirely on him picking the right one to destroy in the one chance he'd get.

 _The only thing I need from you is to destroy his rings or trinklets or whatever the hell he stores his power in_ , Wynonna had said. _Leave the rest to us._

How the fuck was he supposed to decide? He took a moment to focus on the Revenants Bulshar had brought with him, the asshats that had sent him flying as they turned his bike to scrap. He reached out to their weapons and warped the inner workings with a light touch. With any luck they'd explode in the shooters' faces, but he'd settle for them just not firing. At least they couldn't fuck shit up for Team Earp even though Bulshar was much more likely to be the one doing it.

After what felt like an eternity, the doors of the station opened.

Wynonna looked a reasonable approximation of relaxed. Deputy Marshall Dolls had his game face on, calm and confident in a way that doused some of the panic in Bobo's chest. Hank was scowling, hand on his holstered gun, and Waverly stayed a step back behind him, shotgun in her hands.

Bobo sensed moving metal higher up and a moment of concentration revealed two rifles up on the roof of the station. Deputy Haught presumably, given her still injured ribs, and somebody else — perhaps the geek kid. He tried not to look, not to draw any attention to them.

"EARP!" the demon roared.

Wynonna rolled her eyes.

"I'm here, I'm here. Geez, keep your pants on."

"You shouldn't have brought your friends," Bulshar said, voice doing that alarming thing of sounding like a normal human man and simultaneously like a distant cave-in. Without any signal that Bobo could tell, the Revenants all raised and cocked their guns.

"Neither should you," Wynonna said sweetly, and in the next moment there was a deafening, confused salvo of gunfire. Bobo's already splitting headache spiked, and it took him what felt like ages to figure out the outcome - he was beyond relieved that it seemed to be all of Team Earp still standing. Two of the Revenants' guns had exploded into their faces, and only one of the others seemed to have gotten a shot off at all, shattering a window.

They were all down now, and Wynonna picked them off with Peacemaker, letting them disappear into hell. Bobo watched it with sudden cold sweat down his back, the icy expression on her face one he'd had nightmares about, the prospect of going back to hell— no, no, he couldn't think about that. This was going to _work_. They were going to finally kill Bulshar. He wouldn't go back to hell.

The demon laughed, slow and building and horrifying.

"I am so glad you remembered this one is your friend," he finally said, shaking Bobo for emphasis. He tried not to groan as his head knocked back against the demon's shoulder. His vision was blurry with… well, could be concussion, could be the blood slicking across his face. Could be both. "It would not have have been the same without that."

" _Friend?_ " Wynonna said skeptically. "That's overstating the situation a little, don't you think?"

Bobo gave no reaction. 

"...enemy of my enemy and all, and I won't say the guy didn't have some useful information," she was saying, and Lord, she sounded exactly like Willa had, cool and ruthless and with that same delayed impact of _she really means that_ . "But after everything he's done to my family, it would take more than a few days to think of him as a _friend_. He won't exactly have to beg me to shoot you through him, you know?"

Her family. Willa, oh Lord, _Willa_ . Taking her to the tree house had been the only way to save her at the time, but he should have sent her out of the Ghost River Triangle to grow up, to have a life. By the time that might have been safe enough, a couple of months after Ward's death, he'd had a teenager on his hands who knew the burden of the curse with the intimate gravity of a child soldier, who was as eager to break it as he was. Who welcomed his company to relieve her boredom. He'd been so desperate to not be alone, to have an ally, a _partner,_ that he'd put off sending her away.

He knew he'd wronged there, because their eventual romantic relationship might have been on her terms, but he knew it would never have happened if she'd had options, grown up among people, had others in her life.  He'd tried to bury the nagging guilt of it under his fierce love and devotion for her, as if he could love enough for the both of them. Hadn't worked in the end.

Just like this hadn't worked. Good intentions weren't worth shit if other people couldn't see them. If your acts didn't bear them out. He shouldn't have let himself believe— shouldn't have allowed the spark of hope that Wynonna really did see him. She'd behaved like she had because he could make himself useful, and he'd been so desperate for her acceptance that he'd started to think that maybe _this_ Earp—

Maybe hell would be… he remembered thinking this just after Willa had died, too. Maybe hell would be better. Nothing for him to fuck up, there. Just pain to endure. It almost sounded restful.  

"If he's not your friend, then you won't mind if I deal with him as I see fit," Bulshar's words only half registered.

Bobo was jolted out of his contemplations when the demon suddenly moved Bobo to face him, big hand closing around his neck from the front now, lifting his feet off the ground. He wasn't sure what Wynonna had been saying, everything narrowed down to a single point of pain and panic about his restricted airway. Bobo could feel his eyes go their demonic red, his sense for metal suddenly amplified, and right in front of him, hanging around the demon's neck on a chain under his clothes, was a small, perfectly circular amulet.

Circles.

_The thing about going in circles is that it only takes a small change to sent you careening off course._

He could already feel himself going fuzzy with the lack of oxygen, but he imagined closing his fist around that little circle and squeezing, squeezing, _squeezing—_

Bobo Del Rey fell to the asphalt, and never even felt the impact. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_ The thing about going in circles is that it only takes a small change to sent you careening off course. _

Like, say, the Earp heir being a different person with a mind of her own, and not a carbon copy of Wyatt Earp.  

Wynonna had figured that Bulshar would echo back to that standoff with Wyatt; they weren't sure if or how he'd experienced the passage of time since that had happened, but he probably hadn't had too many other things to think about in the past century. 

She hadn't quite counted on such a precise reenaction, or she would have discussed more details with Bobo. Details like 'I'm going to do _anything_ I can to send his plan off course' and 'trust me' and especially 'Please don't listen to anything I say.'

God, he looked like shit. Looked like they'd caught him on his bike - his grey henley was torn and bloody, ugly road rash all down his arm, blood running down his face. She was trying not to look at his face as she talked, keep her focus on the demon, because she could not think about that shuttered look of resigned betrayal, could not let in influence her, she  _ had  _ to sell this. 

She'd sworn to herself that she wouldn't sacrifice him, but she'd been thinking about Wyatt, shooting him to get to Bulshar. Now she wondered if a bullet wouldn't have been kinder. 

"Wynonna," Dolls said warningly under his breath, not moving his lips. She knew what he was warning for - if Bobo believed her, if he gave in to despair, he might not focus on destroying the demon's ring. She had to hope that his hatred for Bulshar was stronger even than the hurt over her apparent betrayal, because she couldn't walk it back, clue him in somehow. She realised she might be forced to spend their one special bullet when the occasion came, whether Bobo had succeeded on his side or not. 

"So you know, I've got enough bullets. You want to use him as a shield, be my guest," she bluffed, levelling Peacemaker. _Oh gods, please let this work, let him take the bait,_ she sent up a prayer to whoever might feel like listening.   

Bulshar laughed that terrifying laugh and shifted his grip on Bobo, turning him around, and she  _ finally  _ had an angle to shoot Bulshar in the head—and the decision to make. Shoot now, with the reasonable chance that even the special bullet just wouldn't do anything, or let him choke Bobo on the off-chance that the Revenant was still trying, still stood a chance to destroy— this was their  _ one  _ chance, how the fuck could she possibly  _ know _ —

Bobo's eyes had gone demonic, and there was a strange pattern on his back glowing through his shirt, brighter and brighter until it began to scorch the cotton away, and Wynonna could  _ feel  _ something happening.  Peacemaker burned more brightly all of a sudden. 

Then there was a release of that feeling, like ears popping but a hundred times stronger. A kind of shockwave that rocked all of them on their feet. 

Bobo fell to the ground like a ragdoll.

Bulshar roared, and the air felt thick like in a nightmare as Wynonna levelled Peacemaker at his forehead and pulled the trigger.

Everything felt weird and wrong and  _ slow  _ as the gun fired, the sound and recoil of it seeming delayed, the bullet cutting a visible trail through the air, the impact into the demon Bulshar's forehead seeming to suck all sound out of the air, the silence deafening and painful.

The asphalt seemed to melt under the demon, and hellfire roared up. Wynonna managed to shake off her shock at the same moment Dolls did, and the two of them dashed forward to the unconscious Bobo, grabbing his arms and dragging him away from the pit and out of the demon's reach. His back was bleeding now, but it barely registered; she couldn't keep her eyes off the sight of Bulshar, writhing and roaring and slowly being pulled down into the fire by hundreds of horrifying grasping hands. 

Her ears felt like they were bleeding, her arm hurting from the kick of the gun. Dolls was facing her, saying something, but the sound wasn't making it across, everything still blocked out by the deafeningly loud silence of Bulshar's roaring and the voices of hell. 

Something collided with her and Wynonna blinked to find her sister engulfing her into a hard hug, and then Dolls wrapped his arms around her from the other side, and Doc slung his arms around all of them, and the normal speed and sound of things seemed to return by slow degrees. 

Finally they were just... hugging in the street, no sign of the demon left at all. Only Bobo on the ground, bleeding, and shit, was he even—

He was breathing, steady but shallow. And if he was human now, he might be bleeding out. 

"We need to get him to the clinic," Nicole said breathlessly as she came up to them, clearly having hurried down from the roof. She pulled Waverly close for a quick kiss to her temple, then took control in a way that four people still recovering from a close encounter with hell apparently sorely needed. 

"Dolls, can you go get the car?" Dolls nodded and jogged away, and she turned to Doc Holliday. "Doc, Jeremy is bringing—there he is, good," she waved Jeremy closer with the stretcher he'd retrieved from the station. "Let's get him on there—"

Nicole's ribs were still far too sore for her to do any of the lifting herself, but she efficiently directed them to get Bobo onto the stretcher with as much care as possible, and into the back of the SUV Dolls had driven up. Wynonna, her sore right arm cradled against her stomach, climbed up into the passenger seat.

"Go, we'll handle things here and text you for updates," Nicole said, and right, they'd used the municipal warning system, sending out a mass text to Purgatory citizens to stay inside. But people would have seen things, and there'd been shots, and— Wynonna couldn't even think about it all right now, glad that the other woman was handling things. 

"Thanks," she whispered, and Nicole closed the car door for her. As Xavier pulled away, she craned her head back to look at Bobo, ghost pale and covered in blood. 

_ You'd better survive this, you asshole,  _ she thought at him.  _ Or it'll never feel like a victory. _

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _promise_ that the next story will be the 'comfort' after all this hurt.


End file.
